Dhaka Divide : Question of Referendum December 6, 2011

Syed Ashraful Islam, Acting General Secretary of AL challanges BNP to assess their popularity/ to justify their demand not to divide Dhaka by contesting in the coming city corporations elections of Dhaka.

Government is willing to hold the Dhaka city corporations election within next three months. But Election Commision officials said that it will not poosible on their part to hold the city corporation elections in that time period. Moreover, the tenure of the present officials will be ended by February, 2012 . They could at best declare the schedule and the next EC may hold the election. But they now are preferring the Next Election Commission to take the responsibility. The election become more uncertain at this transitional period as the acceptability of next election commission is yet uncertain . The name and the nature of selection is yet not declared by the government.

To the challange of Syed Ashraf, Mr.Fakhrul Islam, Acting General Secretary of BNP demands ‘Referendum’ on the issue of Dhaka divide. But there is no provision of referendum in Bangladesh Constitution. It would have better if the provision would be there as in that case the people could express their opinion in critical national issues.

The ordinary citizen is a little confused why people’s choice is not there for national issues in our constitution. Is it that it was not there in our first constitution and was not thought of by the authors of the first constitution and the Father of the nation? Or is it that the provision was cancelled in a later amendment?

Many of the countries have utilized this provision in their national crisis. Very recently Greece has taken referendum on the issue on remaining in the Eurozone and they are trying to overcome their economic crisis in a collective way.

Bangladesh is facing two important national issues where referendum could be a way out to end the political stalemate, one is Dhaka Divide and the other is Caretaker Government.

Now a time has come, when people don’t like to left aside from the national issues and they want to actively participate in forming the decisions that are extremely important in shaping the future of their lives and of their country.

AL with their absolute majority in the parliament is making many amendments to their benefit, but can’t they amend the constitution to make provision of referendum to ensure people’s participation in national issues other than the general election. People would remember them for ever.